Elmhurst College joins monarch butterfly program

Elmhurst College students from the school’s Green Living Community helped set the sign marking the new Monarch waystation.

Elmhurst College students from the school’s Green Living Community helped set the sign marking the new Monarch waystation. (Graydon Megan / Pioneer Press)

Graydon MeganPioneer Press

Butterflies get an assist at Elmhurst College

Elmhurst College officially dedicated one of its gardens as a waystation for monarch butterflies, planted with the milkweed that is the only food monarch caterpillars eat and other nectar-producing flowers and plants for monarchs and other pollinators.

The bright orange, black and white butterflies, which used to be common in summer in the Midwest, are declining in number due to loss of habitat, especially the milkweed that provides both food and a place for the insects to lay their eggs.

A typical Midwest summer will see four generations of the tiny creatures, which weigh at most a couple of hundredths of an ounce. Most live only a few weeks.

But while the first three generations born in a summer live only about two to six weeks, members of the generation born in late summer and early fall somehow manage to live as long as nine months — long enough to migrate to Mexico, where they winter before returning to the U.S. to begin the cycle again.

Sandy Fejt, education site manager at the Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn and a 2003 Elmhurst alumna, spoke of her personal observation of the decline in monarch numbers.

Twenty years ago, while driving north from central Illinois, she pulled over to watch as hundreds of monarch flew across the road.

"I've never forgotten that sight," she said, noting that six years ago she made her backyard garden a monarch waystation. "I've seen the decline in monarchs in my yard — I'm lucky to see three or four monarchs a summer."

Gardens like the one at Elmhurst College, one established at Willowbrook and others, including private gardens, can be part of Midwest, regional and nationwide efforts to provide monarch food and habitat, an effort Fejt said can lead to "a milkweed highway all the way to Texas."

The Bluejay Butterfly Oasis, named for the Elmhurst College mascot, stretches along the south side of Hammerschmidt Chapel, between the chapel and Dinkmeyer Hall. In addition to milkweed, the garden contains butterfly bushes, several kinds of asters, coneflowers, black-eyed-susan and gaillardia, said grounds and maintenance supervisor Paul Hack.

College officials noted the oasis has been a butterfly garden for some time, but this week's dedication marked the recent designation of the garden as a monarch waystation by the conservation and education group Monarch Watch.

During the dedication, more milkweed was planted and those in attendance were offered packets of milkweed seeds along with some tempting cookies shaped and decorated to look like oversized monarchs.